


Ice Intemerate

by XiuChen4Ever



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Brief Mentions of Prey Consumption, East Asian Mythology & Folklore, Except I Made Up The Details Myself, M/M, MAMA Era Powers (EXO), nature deities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:49:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27902509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XiuChen4Ever/pseuds/XiuChen4Ever
Summary: The ice around him burns, but Chen embraces it.  He must abide, must endure.  He must remainsafe.
Relationships: Kim Jongdae | Chen/Kim Minseok | Xiumin
Comments: 23
Kudos: 80
Collections: Magika Astra: Round 1





	Ice Intemerate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [xiuchenlay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xiuchenlay/gifts).



> Written for Magika Astra Fest Round 1 as a self-prompt, except it was actually prompted by a dear friend when my own mind was blank. I absolutely love the result, so thank you for prodding this fic from my brain!
> 
> Thanks also to the mods, for being incredibly understanding and supportive when I had to change plans. May you always find a little sparkle of magic in your own lives!

“At last.”

The words wrench him back into the world with a shiver—why is he so cold? His chest aches as air fills it, cold air, stinging in his lungs just as the too-bright light stings in his eyes. A voice continues to speak, but the words are drowned out by the rush of his own heartbeat, loud as thunder in his ears.

It’s the  _ wrong _ voice, anyway. Isn’t it? It’s somehow too straight, too pointed, when his heart craves a rounder voice, soft as snow.

_ Snow… _

He squints, looks around himself. Squints against the silhouettes bending over him, moving big chunks of ice away from his body.

_ No! _ He reaches shaking limbs toward the shattered pieces around him.  _ I need the ice—I need to stay safe! _ But his limbs are bare and his nails too short and he’s  _ so cold, _ why is he shivering when ice is his staunchest ally?

“Be calm, little celestial. And dress.”

Something furry is shoved at him, but he recoils. He shouldn’t need it. Why does he need it?

“Come,” the pointed voice says. “We’ve been waiting long enough. Dress, so we can go.”

But no—he must stay here, must remain within the press of solid, frigid walls. This is where he is safe, where he was enshrouded, where the ice covered him over like the night sky, dark yet sparkling. It had burned against his body, but he had welcomed it, had let it burn all the desperation away until there was only peace.

Now his peace is as shattered as the ice around him.

There’s a huff, and then someone’s reaching for him, small, sturdy hands like the ones on the ends of his own limbs, but that’s wrong, too, isn’t it? Isn’t it wrong to feel hot fingertips press directly against his bare skin?

Another hand grabs the first. “Be gentle with him, Soo. He obviously hasn’t fully woken yet, have you, Chen?”

_ Chen. _ Is that… him? The name is familiar, but it’s not quite  _ right. _ As if he  _ was _ Chen, when he was dreaming, but once awoken… 

“Jongdae,” he rasps, startling both figures attempting to force his quivering limbs into a fur coat he shouldn’t need. Had never needed before, when he was Chen, long ago before he’d dreamed. It startles Jongdae, too, to hear his voice aloud instead of in his own mind.

“Jongdae?” the taller one asks.

Jongdae nods, lifting quaking fingers— _fingers—_ to his own face, except it isn’t his face anymore. It’s the face he’d dreamt of, the one now reflected in the ice below his cold-numbed knees. A handsome face, and still his, underneath a surface pale as always, pale as snow. It still features dark, angled eyes below expressive brows, a mouth upturned at the corners, angular cheekbones with a familiar slant. He allows his limb—his _arm—_ to be drawn through the warmth of a sleeve, then reaches down to touch the shining portrait in front of him.

“Me. Still me. But I’m Jongdae, now.”

“That’s right, you’re still yourself, just transcended at last,” the taller figure assures him. “I’m Jongin, and this is Kyungsoo. Please pardon his impatience—our dear brother has been lost to us for so long, and you’re the key to finding him again.”

Words move from Jongdae’s mind to his mouth slowly, and he presses his fingers against his face again to feel how his lips shape them, how his throat thrums to give them life.

“Finding… who?”

Jongin pauses in his efforts to pull something—a  _ boot, _ Jongdae thinks—onto his back foot.

“You don’t remember? Our brother, Minseok. The one who froze you here.”

“I remember… ice?”

Kyungsoo snorts, pulling Jongdae up, up, up onto two legs, to be eye level with the sturdy figure before him. “That’s Min. Ice to the very core.”

_ Min… Minseok. _

The name is not ice in Jongdae’s core. It’s warm in his chest, warmer still when it tumbles from his lips, carried on a heart’s sigh. Jongdae  _ knows _ this name, and his soul sings to hear it again.

“Yes, Minseok. We need you to take us to Minseok.” Kyungsoo prods him into overbalancing, and Jongdae stumbles, struggling to catch himself on too few feet.

“Soo!” Jongin admonishes, grabbing hold of Jongdae’s arm. “Give our friend time to adjust—can he really be expected to march straight up a mountain when he’s never walked upright before?”

“My apologies,” Kyungsoo says, taking Jongdae’s other arm to keep him steady. “Of course this is strange for you.”

But Minseok isn’t strange—Minseok is refuge. He must be, because each time Jongdae hears his name, his heart whispers of sanctuary.

He’d been chased, hadn’t he? Long ago when he was almost the smallest Chen he’d ever been. He’d been chased a lot, by angry faces, because small Chen was a thief.

But Minseok was not anyone he’d ever run from. Minseok is the name he ran  _ to. _

There’s no face or figure to go with the name, to hold alongside the voice that still echoes within his new skull as it had once echoed through the frozen cave a desperate fugitive had blindly flung himself into.

“There is no need for furtiveness here, little snowflake,” the voice had said. “If there is something you need, I’ll give it freely. Here you are a guest, not a thief.”

Small Chen had needed so much, hadn’t he? But that snow-soft voice had never refused him anything he’d been unashamed enough to beg for. And through constancy and generosity, small Chen had learned.

All he ever really needed was  _ Minseok. _

Jongdae murmurs the name again, reverently, as if the shining, faceless memory were divinity to be summoned with a prayer.

“Yes. You know where he is. We’ll help you get there, to see him again. Just tell us where to take you.”

“Where...?” Jongdae looks up from his ungainly feet, too heavy in their boots to outrun anyone. There’s alabaster outlined against azure, a bright white opening in front of him, and the two are tugging him toward it. “No. No!” Jongdae writhes, twisting within the false fur to loose himself from their hold. “I must stay here. It’s not safe!”

Condemnation had come for him, when he’d been Chen but not so small, come more than once. Had pounded on Minseok’s gate, demanded the relinquishment of the thieving demon within. Chen had trembled, crouched behind thin, low spires of ice that reached toward the ceiling just as angry fingers reached for Chen through the gate. He had trembled because Minseok is pure, like driven snow, like clearest ice, and purity does not lie.

“There are no thieves here,” Minseok had said, voice snow-soft even as other voices yelled in protest. “I harbor only guests, and will not allow any to track filth into my home and disorder my things searching for what isn’t here.”

They had yelled and growled and grumbled, but they’d always gone away eventually, unwilling to stand shouting in the deepening snow while Minseok paid them no heed. And Minseok would always call to Chen once they’d gone, call him to sit and share a meal, to exchange affection, to trade tales even before Chen could do more than push vague sensory impressions from his own tumultuous mind into the stillness of Minseok's.

He is not Chen now, but he still trembles, and Minseok is not here with his still mind and snow-soft voice. There is only struggle and shouting, and Jongdae must hide.

“Be still, celestial!” Kyungsoo commands. “We mean you no harm. We would return you to Minseok’s side. You wish to see him, don’t you? To show him your virtue, triumphant?”

“My virtue…”

It was something Chen had fought for, fought  _ hard. _ Virtue is not his birthright—he is a thing of greed and deception. A thief of livelihood, and a destined thief of lives.

Until Minseok.

Minseok, who had offered peace to a frenetic little creature, had provided more than a full belly, who had given a hollow, hungry beast the true satisfaction of a full heart. Whose face is still lost to Jongdae except for huge, ice-blue eyes that had shone with fondness, that had frosted over with regret. 

“You cannot stay with me once you gain your fourth tail, little snowflake,” he had said when Chen had showed off the third such achievement (and with it, the ability to communicate more directly mind to mind, thoughts now solidified into gleaming words). “You must stay far away, much as my heart will ache to lose the sparkle of your company.”

_ But why? _ Chen had whined, chin on Minseok’s knee.

“Because Winter is purity, my snowflake, the empty parchment before Spring’s new beginning. It is the domain of natural death, part of the inescapable order of all life. It is natural for a predator to seek prey, to kill to preserve one’s own life or that of one’s family. But after your fourth tail, cows’ livers will not sate you, just as your third means sheeps’ livers will never again dull what burns within you. You will seek human prey, not for survival, but for selfishness. You will usurp Winter’s domain, defy the natural order, and become corrupt.”

_ I will not, _ Chen had sworn, eyes shining with earnesty.

Minseok had run his fingers over Chen’s scalp. “You will, my snowflake. You will be unable to resist, no more than you can now resist a plate of cows’ liver set before you. Your hunger will be too great, and as you are not of the natural world any longer, I will be unable to overlook your crimes.”

Those eyes, so wide and beautiful, had filled with tears, frozen so as not to fall. “I am what I am, dear snowflake, just as you are what you are. I cannot abide corruption, not even for love. My ice must solidify all such wherever I find it, to shatter it in the name of purity though it shatter my own heart as well. I cannot hold back, my snowflake, but if you flee to the domain of another, I will not pursue you.”

_ No, _ Chen had wailed.  _ Do not send me away! _

“If you do not leave, I will destroy you utterly, my dearest snowflake.”

_ So be it, _ Chen had declared.  _ I would rather be purified by your ice than be corrupt in the domain of another. If I cannot be your snowflake, let me melt away. _

Icy eyes had shimmered. “You will be my snowflake until your ninety-ninth cows’ liver. We will make of our time what we can.”

Chen had done his best. He had previously raced to consume his hundred sheeps’ livers, burning with anticipation of being able to speak properly with the one he adored, who had looked at a fugitive and seen a guest. Who had averted his early corruption simply by declaring him welcome. Who was purity itself, unable to mitigate Chen’s future crimes so easily. Chen had been determined to control himself, prove himself worthy of remaining indefinitely before the glittering beauty of Minseok’s gentle gaze.

He had abstained from consuming any livers for an entire week. But Minseok, of course, had been right. Chen ultimately could not resist their allure. He’d swallowed each one along with his disappointment, had been resolved to abstaining from any more after that.

Each time he had eventually succumbed to the temptation of red flesh in his throat, the tingle of growing power at the base of his spine.

“I cannot leave!” Jongdae tells Jongin, appealing to the one with the kinder eyes. “I am too weak—I will defile myself and force Minseok to destroy me. I cannot do that to him—I must stay where it’s safe.”

“It’s safe!” Jongin catches Jongdae’s wrists before he thrashes free of the coat entirely. “I promise, little celestial—Jongdae. It’s safe to leave now—you’ve transcended. And Kyungsoo and I will guard our brother’s treasure well.”

“You must go to him, Jongdae,” Kyungsoo says, voice low and calm though Jongdae can see the strain in the set of his shoulders. “We need him back. He has been away far too long, and none of us can find him.”

“But you can find him, Jongdae,” Jongin adds. “You are Winter-kissed, snow’s own child. You found him once before, though your paths were never meant to cross. Follow your heart, and find him again.”

“My heart?”

Jongin nods. “Focus—can’t you feel it? Like calls to like.”

_ And love calls to love. _

Jongdae can hear it more than feel it, Minseok’s threnody for his dearest snowflake. It’s louder when he cautiously emerges from the ice that was his temporary tomb. There is still some awkwardness but no hesitation in his ungainly feet as Jongdae starts out across the glacial plateau, following the mournful song of the north wind.

“That’s it,” Jongin says, still steadying his elbow.

“At last,” Kyungsoo mutters, sweeping boulders and scree out of Jongdae’s path with impatient flicks of his fingertips.

As Jongdae heads straight for the icy spire at the head of the plateau, more figures fall into step behind them.

“I told you he was in that blasted mountain,” one voice says.

“Of course he’s in the mountain,” another huffs, “but we’ve searched for a century with no result. The stone is too numbed by his grief to respond to Kyungsoo’s inquiries, the water only sobs despite Junmyeon’s coaxing, even the air carries only dirges to Sehun’s ears. Even with all our power, he is lost to us forever—but the celestial will take us straight to his doorstep.”

Jongdae stops. He turns to the one who spoke, tall with hair like autumn’s boldest leaves, a smile wide as that season’s bounty and eyes that burn with its decay.

“Why?” Jongdae asks. He is no stranger to underhanded ways. “What do you want with Minseok?” He will not lead them to the purest heart if they mean only to plague him.

“He is our brother, Jongdae,” Jongin says at his elbow. “We love him. We miss him, fret for him.”

“And he is needed to keep the balance,” another says, one who smells pale green like tiny growing things, with dimples sown deep into his face like seeds into soil. “We are brothers, and respect each other’s roles in the turning of the earth, but some of us champion order while others beget chaos. Crystalized in his grief, our Minseok leaves order less tended, and the contest is only satisfying when it is equal.”

“We cannot unleash our most prized creatures of havoc until his temper is restored,” another pouts. This one has eyes that blaze like the midsummer sun and a smile so bright it stings Jongdae’s still-sensitive eyes. “We do not actually seek the world’s end any more than we would see it folded into unbreaking lines. We need our oldest brother to come forth and be tested, to push and be pushed with the rest of our rigid brethren.”

Jongdae smiles. Of all the tales Minseok’s snow-soft voice would relate to Chen’s ever-thirsty ears, he’d enjoyed those of divine contest the most. How Minseok's more mischievous brothers would try to increase their dominion by distracting those meant to be guarding borders, and how satisfying it was to set them in their proper places once again. Jongdae cannot trust the ones that foment chaos any more than Chen could trust his own willpower, but nearly half of them uphold order. They would not lie or allow others to deceive him.

But Jongdae’s heart is yet troubled by questions, rolling one after the other like stormclouds on the horizon.

“Why is Minseok neglecting his duties? Is he somehow unwell?” He hadn’t thought it possible for Minseok’s kind to fall ill, but Jongdae is only a small thing at his core, still, unwise to every divine possibility.

“He does not neglect duty,” a brother says, face more familiar than the rest, youthful but with eyes that seem to have seen epochs. “Winter arrives and departs on schedule, the aged pass away to make way for the young. He merely neglects to recall that he does not number among the dead, himself.”

Still supported by Jongin’s arm, Jongdae has somehow managed to travel leagues in a few dozen steps of his too-heavy boots. They’re halfway up the icy peak, and Jongdae’s heart aches at what surrounds him, even without the solemn reports of Minseok’s brothers.

The unthinking wind tries to cut directly through Jongdae’s borrowed fur without the courtesy to swerve around his form. In every snowy gust, Jongdae’s name is scrawled, both his names, tangled together like mistletoe constricts the bare branches of winter-stripped trees. Jongdae’s faces, present and past, are carved into every snowdrift, etched across every frozen pond, molded by every dripping icicle.

“He mourns for Chen,” Jongdae realizes. “Just as I once mourned for us both.”

He had howled his grief to the ever-grayer skies as his liver count rose into the nineties. Minseok had spent those days just staring at Chen, eyes glazed with rime, that divinely beautiful face now emerging in Jongdae’s memory as it had been then, frozen against impending devastation. He had watched Chen cry, and try, and fail, until two livers stood between Chen and eternity. An eternity without Minseok, no matter how things ultimately ended. They could not be together, could never share a similar form, could never truly embrace, never regard each other arm in arm, eye to eye, heart to heart.

But then—a brother had visited, the one whose eyes hold the wisdom of millennia. Minseok had tried to freeze his sorrow behind a smile, to serve plum-blossom tea and iced cakes, to sparkle like fresh snow beneath the sun. Chen had made himself scarce, as usual, practically crackling with shame and unworthiness to be seen in the presence of someone so incredibly pure, even if he had yet to truly defile himself.

But the eon-eyed brother had somehow still seen, and in an instant, his smile became all-knowing.

“You know, dear brother,” he had said, “for a creature’s spirit to transcend to the celestial, they merely have to survive for a century. It matters not what they may or may not have consumed.”

“It matters to me,” Minseok had said. “You know the merest touch of corruption burns through me like acid aflame, a poison to all that I am.”

“I do know. But I also know that Winter brings sleep, sleep like death. The slumberers consume nothing, yet they awaken once again when the threat of ice has abated.”

Minseok had frozen nearly solid. Chen could not even see the semblance of breath from where he lay flattened beneath Minseok’s favorite lap robe. Even in his cringing shame, he had been compelled to surround himself with the essence of the divine.

And Minseok, epitome of purity, devotee of order, had been compelled as well, to keep an undisciplined, corruption-inclined creature at his side forever, even if that meant a century of separation first.

“It will hurt, dear snowflake,” he had warned, but Chen could not begin to care. What was a century of agony against an eternity of bliss? He had gone to his incarceration willingly, happily, frolicking down snowy paths ahead of his frosty escort. He had laid himself down against the burning ice, had borne it with an incandescent heart.

Minseok would keep him, keep him pure so as to keep him close. He had covered him over with ice intemerate to match his crystalline nature, clear and pure, shining and incorrupt. And within, Chen burned, agonized yet incorruptible.

He had burned with hunger, with longing, with impatience, with gratitude. He had burned within the ice for a century, and emerged as he’d gone in, no human blood staining his face, weighting his stomach, tingling along his spine.

Minseok had kept his snowflake pure, and now Jongdae’s spine tingles with anticipation, three pure white tails quivering behind him, two soot-backed ears pricked among the snowy hair atop his head. No longer is he a fox demon, slave to the unending pursuit of more livers, more power. He is a celestial fox, transcended, free.

He steps beneath a glistening overhang into a glittering cave of ice, immediately feeling safe, sheltered,  _ home, _ despite the absence of any door or gate. He can hear the group rumbling behind him with questions and chastisements, but they capture none of Jongdae’s attention. All of his adoration is focused on the shining figure before him, ice-blue eyes on a level with his own.

Jongdae steps forward, blessing the accident of nature that had stolen all the red from a fox cub’s fur prior to his birth, blessing the act of the divine that had stolen all the red from his once-bloodthirsty soul. He steps forward, and uses his new arms to pull the purest heart to his upright chest. His new thumbs serve well to wipe tears, frozen like diamonds, away from Minseok’s beautiful eyes. His new lips serve even better to press against pearlescent skin.

He closes his eyes, chin on Minseok’s shoulder instead of his knee, mouth recurved and ears relaxed as always beneath the divine fingertips stroking his scalp. His smile only grows as his beloved murmurs something in that snow-soft voice, easily captured by still-thirsty ears.

“At last.”


End file.
